National Congresses

At 10am on Saturday, 10 March, the 31st Congress of the Pakistani Marxists opened its doors in the impressive Aiwan-i-Iqbal building in Lahore. This year there has been a record participation, exceeding all previous attendance. Over 2,600 people filled the huge hall to full capacity. There were no spare seats upstairs or downstairs and some people had to sit in the passageways.

Preparations for a Historic Congress of Pakistani Marxists are in full swing and a big participation is expected in Aiwan-i-Iqbal on 10, 11 March. Four Draft Documents have been published for this congress and debates are being finalized from branches to regional congress for the four sessions in congress. Documents are also published on our Urdu website www.struggle.com.pk

Fightback and La Riposte supporters converged in Toronto for the May long weekend to attend the annual Fightback national conference. This year, over 40 comrades from Fredericton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver, with international guests from Britain, were able to attend and discuss the rapid changes occurring around the world. The conference also marked the 10th anniversary of supporters of the ideas of the International Marxist Tendency organizing national meetings in Canada; to begin the conference, a picture from the first conference in 2001 was shown, and comrades could see how far we had come in the past decade.

This year’s national sellers conference of ‘Socialist Appeal’ was held in London on the weekend of April 16th and 17th. Supporters from all over Britain, from Aberdeen to Torbay, came together against the backdrop of a year of class struggle and revolution in Britain and internationally. Without doubt, the conference marked a new period in the development of the Marxist voice.

This year’s congress of The Struggle, the IMT in Pakistan, was the most successful of all the congresses held so far, with the biggest turn out ever. The conference was a special event as it marked the 30th anniversary of the founding of The Struggle. In that period, The Struggle has gone from a tiny handful of comrades to a sizable organisation with deep roots covering the whole of Pakistan.

The Nigeria section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) recently held its national Conference on Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th November, 2010. The Conference which was well attended by the members witnessed a lot of highly educational and inspiring leadoffs and contributions from the comrades present in the sessions. Some of the comrades living outside Lagos travelled hundreds of kilometres on the ever deteriorating Nigerian roads to be part of the conference.

On October 30 and 31, the Marxist Tendency “Militante” held its XIV Congress in the historic building which used to belong to the Mexican Communist Party in Monterrey 50, now a PRD office. The Congress took place while Mexico has been going through a severe economic recession and with large parts of its territory under the control of the drug cartels.

In late May, supporters of Fightback in English Canada, and La Riposte in Quebec, gathered to rally the forces of Marxism fighting the Canadian state. Over 40 young workers, students, and trade unionists gathered in Toronto to discuss the effects of the capitalist crisis and how to mobilize resistance to the bosses’ attacks. It was the largest and most successful gathering in the history of the event, with activists flying in from as far as Vancouver, and shows the growing presence of Marxist ideas in Canada.

With representatives from 7 different regions, the Venezuelan comrades held their re-founding Congress of the Venezuelan section of the IMT in Caracas, taking the opportunity to launch their new paper, “Lucha de Clases” (Class Struggle). Also present were workers from three occupied factories (INAF, Gotcha and INVEVAL). The comrades have had to deal with very difficult internal conditions over the past year but the mood was one of great enthusiasm and optimism, and they are committed to playing an important role within the PSUV and the Venezuelan revolution.

The Second Day of the congress was dedicated to a discussion on the approach of Marxists to the mass organisations and also on the work of building the forces of Marxism in Pakistan. In spite of attacks on the tendency, the comrades have made important gains, and the mood is one of determination to build.